Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: v. 2 (Schocken paperbacks on Jewish life and religion)

This magnum opus by author George Foot Moore (a Harvard professor in the history of religion) marks the culmination of a long rise of objective scholarship in the formerly parochial study of the Rabbinic period. The two-volume set provides a systematic account of Tannaitic Judaism, from the time of Herod to that of the Patriarch Judah, who edited and promulgated the Mishnah. It illustrates the complex development of the Jewish religion as both an ethical code and a mode of daily life. A full historical introduction traces this development from the fall of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, when a scattered people learned to rely on the school and the synagogue as the center of religious, intellectual, and social life.